"controllable" poems
I'm hearing these alien words that terrify me.
Terminal, seroconvert, infection, inconclusive, possibility.
They say stay strong, keep your chin up.
They don't understand just the possibility is enough.
Who wants a woman you can't take to bed?
Who wants to fear when I bled?
Alien words, alien feelings, foreign bodies inside and out of me.
But don't worry, they say.
It's controllable, a pill a day.
Pills. That's what they give me.
For the depression, the infection, the anxiety.
I feel as helpless as the child I will never bare.
"What the hell is going on" I blare.
Testing, testing, testing they say.
As I ***** to cope and my legs give way.
Fragility, infertility, susceptibility.
But don't worry, it's all just a possibility.
Dec 6, 2014
Dec 6, 2014 at 10:45 PM UTC
Few can pronounce it
Unless Scandinavian.
The r's are all rolling,
And the letters all sound...
More or less not as
In English.
Just let it go, it's a 'twister,
I know.
My names are all old-norse,
Not modern Norwegian.
(Viking-speak sounded
More close to Icelandic).
Sverre means "spin like an arrow",
Expression for being untamed; un-
Controllable; wild-man.
G is for Guttorm: "Where Gods
Seek Shelter"; a fortress for those
One thought needed one least.
Holter means "edge of the woods";
The end of the forest (or where it
Begins).
*The Wildman Where the
Gods Seek Shelter at the
Edge of the Woods.*
My friends call me Sverre.
It is a name I've shared with
Swordbearing kings.
I am equally proud
When addressed.
May 6, 2014
May 6, 2014 at 3:00 PM UTC
as my sister
inspects
her *******
in the white
piece of paper
we both
refer to
as the one
and only
ghost
mirror
I fry
god’s egg
in the plastic
shovel
I took
from a sandbox
shaped
like a coffin
and shiver
like the psychic
who with
the controllable
sobbing
of her hands
gave our seizures
to animals
Apr 23, 2014
Apr 23, 2014 at 9:24 PM UTC
Charlie was a leprechaun,
midway born into a family
of thirteen
the scourge of catholic school
daring to shout ‘Thank God’
when the mass was ended
smoking cigarettes
for their illicit thrill,
found himself a summer job
cleaning up the trash
at the town park,
found himself in the background
of a photo of the young cleanup crew
on the cover of the community newspaper
he was flipping off the photographer.
his mom made him wear an ace bandage
that covered his hand
but for his middle finger
for two weeks
his laughter was un-controllable
Feb 24, 2013
Feb 24, 2013 at 9:59 AM UTC
I laid there staring
at the insanely
bright and rude
fluorescent light
that
mocked my suffering.
The cold concrete
floor felt
good against
my screaming aches.
My body was
pleading with the
Gods for just a
taste of what
had been taken
away.
My bowels were as
controllable as
a teen aged
beauty.
With a ****
I brought my
burning face
toward the cool
silent cold metal
toilet.
Ugly yellow bile
that only a tired
and tortured
body could
produce
spewed forth.
A moan and a wipe
then a hollow knock
on the graffiti
covered cell door.
"You made bail"
an almost robotic
sounding voice
says.
With a thousand tiny
swordsman stabbing
at my face I
managed to smile
into my own bile.
I looked at the
mustached uncaring
face in the
small window.
"You look like Death Pal"
The mustache says to me.
I spit the acrid taste
of day old *****
and ****** resin.
Then rise and run my
sweaty palm through
my hair in an
attempt at looking
presentable.
The mustache opens
the door and
as I walk out
I look directly at the
rogue hairs
protruding from
the mustaches nostrils
and say.
"Death Is Beautiful"
The mustache holds
the door as I walk out.
I'm feeling better already
"Oh Yea well so was my Xwife
look at how much trouble
she still causes me".
The mustache says
Every step
I take down
the institutional colored,
masonic checkered floored
hallway causes
my body
to scream with hope.
I can feel the sweat
roll down my face
but I refuse to let
this mustache
see my suffering.
We stop at the
property window,
I sign a half
of an X where it
says signature.
Then before
I gather up
my belongs
and head
back out into the
night I looked
over at the
mustache and said
"You had a Wife?"
Jan 8, 2014
Jan 8, 2014 at 5:03 PM UTC
Mood stabilizers, they call them, but in some ways, they're more like painkillers for your heart. They numb the feelings so that you don't have the extreme moods you are accustomed to.
When you have a mood disorder, everything you feel is so much more intense, and so much more certainly snowballs out of control. That's most of the problem; the complete lack of control you have over your chaotic emotions.
But then you go to a doctor, and they give you happy little pills called stabilizers to do just as they're told to. Stabilize you. Normalize you.
Funny thing is, even with the little heart painkillers, you'll never be normal. Even if you keep up a fantastically ordinary facade, you will never be ordinary. You will always have those little pills in your pocket telling you that you are not good enough the way you are, that you must change.
Its a double-edged sword, these pills. Because some days you wonder why you can't just be you, why do you need these drugs in your veins, but then you remember the cuts on your arms and the painful nights where you drowned in your own tears and you remember why even you don't think the person you are is acceptable. Get better, Grace, be better, Grace. The words pound in your ears until you forget who you used to be and you are always striving to be something more, something better. You strive until it kills you.
You are stronger, you can beat it, they say.
What if I don't want to beat it, though, just want to have control of it? I never want to feel less than everything, I never want to feel so dull and numb that it kills me more than the pain ever did, I never want to beat myself, I simply want to be me but controllable.
Because right now I'm uncontrollable and that's terrifying.
Painkillers for your heart, numbing you until you can't feel anymore. But sometimes I wonder if I really want to feel numb.
Do I want to be me, or who everyone wants me to be?
One is safer than the other, but which one is really living?
Because all I want is to feel alive, but I don't know whether surviving will entail that.
Painkillers or killer pain.
That is my decision, one I'm not ready to make. Maybe tomorrow, when mania is not so close to my throat.
Maybe tomorrow, because I am far too afraid of today.
Dec 13, 2014
Dec 13, 2014 at 1:39 PM UTC
Revel in space, yet not darkled, still
the **** and span of things that breeds
airlessness; The trees are evenly cut,
and their overgrowth seems like a forethought.
Where I am from, we eat fish with
our bare hands and our furniture, from bodies
of sandalwood, crushed with the scent of
peregrines. The morning makes you conscious
of space, and altogether the height of trees
syncopates to a nauseating stillness. In the awning
hours, leaves punctuate the ground – the cicada
with its machinistic song prowls, spills like
water from a broken vase toppled by me
years younger, raw, agile, deftly windless,
wounded in love, lovingly wounded,
perhaps if there is a word for it, then let me
have my way, easily fraught with its meaning:
a casualty. Sometimes the timeworn folks
would light cigarettes underneath the canopy
of a mango tree to banish ants and send them back
to their queens – roosters in their wrinkled stations
croon in stasis, a song for the somnolent. I become
what the seasons evict. Constancy. Rearing weight
and gravity from nocturne. Tears are communal.
They make us aware of the weight of the Earth.
Somewhere, a funebre stilts through the silence,
and the jangle of little pieces spells out fortuity,
men in huddles mending pain by the sleight of hand,
a toss of a card, spinning in its imaginary axis: fate,
feigned and fine-tuned to belief that it is controllable,
a variable, or a tabulation marred by frailty. From where
I am from, people stride through the streets naked,
soldering baskets filled with fruits gossamer from the
harvest, children suckling their mothers, the music of sweeping
metastasizes throughout the afternoon, and the same clouds
contort themselves to afford wry proposition: it is a day tender
with wonder, its allure overwrought, its sheen unremarkable.
The funebre leaves with a necessary abundance of absence.
All the leaves depart from their mothering boughs,
collapsing on the dreary back of the loam like penitence.
Like how once when you were young, you tinkered with
the fresh scab of your wound and felt the pain confine
itself there, a part of you, that has now healed, but is still
available for the world to break once again.
Jan 30, 2016
Jan 30, 2016 at 4:47 PM UTC
A toe-tapper with dapper deities dancing amongst my dreams, whilst whispering the seeds of hidden keys
Interloper of the thieves
Charmer of the fleas
A Powerful peon, seceding from the teams
Daring to believe in the sea, swallowing the cities in its grief
Dare to achieve the belief of flight and fly away
Contemplate and fall in over thought
Just do not
Stop
Doing the undo-able
Fate is renewable
Outwardly controllable
In what you think you see in the deplorable hues from the hopeful news of better days, lead astray in satisfaction to the complaints of saint-less ways
I debate creating another other place, and drifting away through space, but hey, maybe its a phase and i'm just late to the show
Last to know your nothings
Im [Spinning]
In place
Dec 15, 2012
Dec 15, 2012 at 10:03 AM UTC
I have a memory that kills me
Like shards of glass sliding through my atrium,
Undetectable until it has ripped an
Irreparable hole in my heart.
His arm is tightened around my neck,
Pressure behind,
Pulling me to him,
My fear thicker than the air I could not breathe.
And then it was over,
Over like the red and sweat of my face
As the oxygen rushed back in.
Therapist says it was not an accident.
In 30 seconds he had tested me.
I was controllable.
Pass or fail
Depends on who you ask.
Dec 6, 2019
Dec 6, 2019 at 2:50 AM UTC
Planets align
Don't malign
Elliptical simplicity
With rhetorical duplicity
Minds engage
While hearts do rage
Beyond the sources
Of controllable forces
Span the continuum
In search of equilibrium.
The Lost are found
Yet questions abound
Jul 1, 2015
Jul 1, 2015 at 3:19 PM UTC
A thought
It could be anything
Cars
Video games
Books
A fun word
It's fun to see where thoughts
Go
If allowed to wander
They usually
Go
To sleep
Go
To perverted matters
They are not
Easily
Controllable
But they can be.
Or at least
I'd guess.
I plan to make
No
Effort to control
This stream of
Emotions
Ideas
Life
Because that ruins the
Fun.
Jul 9, 2013
Jul 9, 2013 at 4:47 AM UTC
*Things aren't going right again today
I wish I could close my eyes and pretend
That's everything would be fine soon
But then again, I need to tackle this mess
It threatens to over power me and gain
Do you know that creepy feeling, like all is lost?
Like you can feel dejected and simply sigh!
Or scream your agony out!
Some how that should help,
make things controllable
But it doesn't do a dime!
So I pause and gather my thoughts,
Penning my frustration,
at odds that fly in my path
Some how I attract the worst
I feel like that all the time
Then I close my eyes and think!
No there is worse!
I am not there!
With the worst
I am here with the blest.
I have roof over my head
Clothes to wear
A job that pays
Food on the table and
loved ones to care.
This mess is the selfishness pouring
Out of hearts that have forgotten gratefulness
In its place grows restlessness
To seek and infect and thrive on sadness
Till it devours and make its conquest.
Oh Lord, my frustration is overpowering
If you don't do something soon I'll trip
That's not what I'd want cause I'll feel like a wreck
So I turn my gaze to you and reflect
Ask myself, what did you learn today
Did you get buried in your problems
Or did you look up and pray.
You see, the GREAT TEACHER, is watching
Life's little lessons he sends our way
Chapters on human psychology
Management of Time and Stress
His methods are tough
Not meant for the weak
Only the strong, can pass His test.
He never mean't it to be easy
Cause your are just not anybody
But His special treasure
Which He would like to gather
Richer and purer, after a struggle that's worthy
Of His Kingdom so glorious.
Which I await with a sadness, the longer I tarry!
With this experience firmly noted in my life's book
I shall mark it with gladness, for when again history repeats itself
I shall remember to read this lessons with gratefulness
The GIFT of words He gave, so that I can share.
When again frustration raises it ugly head
Armed with HIS words I'll fight my best.*
Sep 5, 2014
Sep 5, 2014 at 5:39 AM UTC
some days i miss you like an ant bite.
small.
controllable.
i can even overlook it with the right amount of will power.
others, i miss you as if my gallbladder was removed.
big.
painful.
i can continue to live, but i know that something is missing.
Dec 27, 2014
Dec 27, 2014 at 12:06 PM UTC
when your writing non-stop
writing the ink out your pens
or leads out your pencils
then i must confess
have you heard of poetic disease
because i think i've been possessed
when your mind has things flowing
and you know it can't stop
i bet it would be hours until the pencil or pen drops
this is not a real disease
but you can catch this mentaly
and once you do
just imagine all the writing your mind will allow you to
image the thoughts that'll run your mind
image the flow that'll control your mind
when i was first possessed i thought i was crazy
my hands moving non-stop it seemed so amazing
i felt so great
my poems were coming back to back
like music i had a un-controllable flow
and thats a moment i ll never let go
for anyone who has had this disease
tell the world your feelings
your experience
was it good bad or great
did you love it or hate
cause i've never witnessed such a disease that allows us to create
Sep 16, 2014
Sep 16, 2014 at 12:24 AM UTC
No doorknobs exist on this floor.
I can't find any outlets.
The belt that lady--I didn't mean to
disappoint--bought me is coiled,
surrounded by Tupperware walls.
A nurse checked herself in. No
affect; asking for charge; reset.
I'm twenty and letting down my dad.
My belt used to live at JC Penny
and has navy-outlined bass on it.
One of the counselors is black,
from Africa, was adopted, moved
here to be raised by two JP Morgan
lifers, played collegiate soccer, married,
got pregnant, lost the boy--which he said
he had a feeling it would have been.
So, he can relate.
No doorknobs exist on this floor.
I am twenty and this exists in the past.
Wheeling in due to an inability to walk
--totally her brain's fault; a real former-
controllable, current-uncontrollable thing
that her mind pulled on her, on account
from the cold, Vaseline touch of a relative
--this redheaded girl pretends to smile
before apologizing for pretending to smile.
Our black counselor, former soccer player
and father says to not apologize and that
we are all pretending, all the time, even
when we don't think we are.
I find this strangely comforting.
Oct 7, 2017
Oct 7, 2017 at 3:09 AM UTC
Neon lights reflect again and again,
In the puddles and streams
As the rain pours heavy
In that unfinished city.
Great Jupiter blots out the sky;
So imminent, yet silent.
Ever watching the endless construction;
Of its infant moons
Ganymede is all but consumed
In towers and scaffolds,
Endless looping highways,
And defunct machinery.
In the eyes of Jupiter
Has it been but a moment,
But to the denizens of that place,
Their reign is endless.
Their ancient cities and facilities
Devour everything in their path
And in that slow process,
Have become a new entity all together.
One not entirely controllable.
A system and network of its own
That desires something beyond sight,
Something its creators lost long ago.
Apr 20, 2017
Apr 20, 2017 at 2:12 PM UTC
Stop it with the temper tantrums and "poor me"s
Stop victimizing yourself because you are the one hurting yourself
Mistakes are understandable and two-time mistakes are fine
But Jesus ******* Christ
You do this all the time
It's stupid and irrational and self destructive
It hurts me to see you in pain but I have pains of my own
Pains that aren't controllable
I.e. A parent with cancer
Yet your pain stems from the continual decision to smoke **** and get too high
You say you're embarrassed and you should be
You can't control the sad environment around you
But you can control how you respond to it
So stop responding this way because we're all fed up with the ********
You need help -- Literally
You need a therapist and a psychiatrist
Hell! If I had a prescription pad, I'd put you on a high dose of prozac
And sort out those daddy issues of yours
You are a genuinely good, kind person
But your life is going nowhere because you're too caught up in your cruel past
I hate to say this, but get over it
Because things will not fall into place unless you make an effort to fix your disposition
Oct 20, 2013
Oct 20, 2013 at 6:49 PM UTC
I see now
what they say
how love
smacks you
in the face
like an inevitable
falling leaf
or
how the moon
pulls at the
waves
love is un-
controllable
and can't be
cut away
and only
grows
incessantly with
your
every embrace
Sep 25, 2015
Sep 25, 2015 at 2:49 AM UTC
At the eye of the storm, my mind is clear,
But zooming out, you can see that the farther
Things get from this pin ***** of perfection,
The more fragile and damageable it all gets.
Everything; big and small and imperfect.
This clutter is controllable though,
If you know how.
I think.
Sep 2, 2015
Sep 2, 2015 at 4:49 PM UTC
Death Haunts
Death haunts me like a shadow
an excuse of sorts that jars my thoughts
always captures me unawares
Between the sheets of ghosts and the linen of things.
not that it matters I suppose we all have our day
that marked territory of Hades and Shoals
Those gateways that the boat somehow crosses between,
These are the images that bind us and **** us
Taking our last image and rendering it null and void
placing a memory of persona upon another's thought patterns
And leaving us bare to the cold and empty Hollows of death.
We can't do a ****** thing about it
amazing how we live this life trying to control all our horizons
Then to hit that final brick wall where nothing is controllable,
Nothing fits, just the silence wins the day, the hour, that moment.
Just like that second prior to conception, I wonder.
Alisdaire O'Caoimph
Apr 2, 2011
Apr 2, 2011 at 6:38 AM UTC
I don’t know about those pastoral scenes
Those bucolic and primordial endless greens
Unspoilt trees and murmuring streams
I know the concrete and the pavement
Uneven cobblestones with cracks in them
With dandelions growing through
Only sometimes
I love the later more
I’m in love with the concrete behemoths
The back alleys of life
The gnarled bouncers (unreciprocally)
The curious glimpses at weathered flyers on the floor
I love the sterile street lights and the worn faces ILLUMINATED by them
The ushers and hustlers and cautious taxis
The drunk geniuses
The night-swimmers
The nudists
The opinionated
Etc
Yet life whittles down these loves for that of the
Calculable
The
Regimented
And
Controllable
Etc
Sep 25, 2014
Sep 25, 2014 at 8:00 PM UTC
Almost everything in life is controllable, except for time.
It’s something that is endless, never pausing for a moment to wait for you to catch up.
It’s something we are all victims of.
It’s what gives us life and it brings our own demise closer and closer every day.
Destruction is a result of human existence through time.
None of us want this to end; and anyone would admit to wanting the ability to hit pause and freeze time itself.
Time is unstoppable.
It’s something that brings us all down to size.
No matter our age, gender, race, or religion, not one of us can halt time.
Some, however, can create the illusion of time standing still. Closing your eyes, and letting everything disappear.
Take my hand.
Don’t let the time go by.
Don’t let me lose control.
Never fear.
It’s only time.
Feb 18, 2016
Feb 18, 2016 at 3:22 PM UTC
Every one in this house
is always sleeping soundly
at this hour
but me
I shovel drugs and drinks
inside my now dry mouth
and they poke at my brain
who says
“spit it all out”
I close my eyes and mimic
the dark and the quiet
at this hour
but I
Can suddenly hear a party
that exists five cities over
and the people
they’re real
but they sound
like a radio
and I open my eyes
and the party is over
and the static is gone
Then I start to hum a song
to soothe my mind with
a familiar sound
something real
controllable
Everyone in this house
is always sleeping soundly
at this hour
but me
By now I’m out
of drugs and drinks
and I’m left with
thoughts and thinks
and I hear footsteps
Oct 18, 2011
Oct 18, 2011 at 3:34 AM UTC